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After a decadelong venture at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, securities litigator Peter Borkon has left the firm's East Bay office for plaintiff-side litigation boutique Bleichmar Fonti & Auld.

Borkon joined BFA's Oakland office as a partner on Tuesday. He also will serve as co-director of institutional investor relations at the firm in an effort to expand its capabilities in that area, including its institutional investor environmental social governance practice.

“Going to a smaller firm, like the boutique firm that I am going to, allows us to be much more tailored in the services that we are providing to our institutional investors,” Borkon said.

Borkon started his legal career as a judicial law clerk at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois and moved to San Francisco in 1998 to work for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. For over two decades, Borkon has focused his practice on prosecuting complex civil cases, including large-scale securities fraud class actions, for institutional and individual investors. He also counsels investors on financial fraud and fiduciary law.

Borkon recently brought an investor suit against McKesson Corp. directors for allegedly failing to ensure internal systems for spotting suspicious opioid shipments functioned properly.

Peter Borkon, Bleichmar Fonti & Auld.

“One of the highlights of BFA is they have a Toronto office and an international practice,” Borkon said. “As securities litigation is becoming more and more difficult within the U.S. court system, a lot of those cases are moving overseas to EU jurisdiction [and to] Canada.”

BFA, which is based in New York City, also has offices in Oakland, California, and Toronto. In addition to being drawn to the firm's global platform, Borkon added that he specifically wanted to join BFA because the firm prohibits political donations.

“There have been some firms, for better or worse, that had issues around their political donations, potentially impacting their client's relationships,” Borkon said.

Before joining Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro in 2007, Borkon was an attorney at San Francisco-based class action boutique Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe for about three years. Prior to that, he was an associate at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy.